“Nora! Come look at the frost on your window!”

(pause)

“Is it frosting??”

“No. Frost. Because it’s so cold.”

“Because it’s so cold??”

“Yes. And the sun will melt it later today.”

“The sun will melt it??”

“Yes.”

(pause)

“And then we can eat it?”

“No. It’s not frosting. It’s frost.”

“Oh.”

(pause)

“Mommy.”

“Yes.”

“Is it frosting?”

I could go on - for paragraphs or hours - on the afternoons I spend with my children. After I pick Nora up from school and the three of us retreat to the cozy confines of our little house while I start getting dinner ready. Maybe Nora watches a show and Gabe scoots around the floor playing with toys and hoping I won’t notice when he gets his hands on the remote control. We’re in a very nice phase and I’d be foolish to think it’s going to last forever but I will certainly take it for now. It is slowly but surely making up for the five days of my life that I’m still, amazingly, not over, that we shall forever call, “Right After I Had Gabe and J Was Bed-Ridden With the Flu and my Mom Had a Broken Arm and my Dad Didn’t ‘Feel Like’ Holding the Baby and No Other Family Was Around and Also the Incontinence.”

It’s a million times better than that.

One of the greatest things I’ve been able to witness in our time together is Nora growing and changing as a sister. I’ve got to tell you: she’s a natural. She’s good at cheering up her little brother. She’s good at distracting him and playing with him in a gentle, appropriate way.

And then there was her crowning moment, just the other day. I was in the kitchen, doing something that required my total attention - which is, by the way, not something I’d recommend when your two young children are all the way in the next room - when I noticed Gabe pushing his way over to this small pile of post-Christmas tree/decoration debris we’d swept into the corner and neglected to put into the trash. He can’t truly crawl just yet, leading us to believe - falsely - that most things are out of his reach, but he can definitely get around.

I realized that as soon as he got there he was going to put whatever he could into his mouth, as fast as possible, as babies love to do, so I yelled out to Nora, “Hey! Stop him! Don’t let him get that trash!” I don’t usually count on Nora for things like this, because, you know, she’s three, but I was stuck. Sure enough she rose to the occasion, ran over, took her brother by his shoulders, pulled him from the menacing pile, then grabbed his clenched little fist - as he’d made it before the intervention - pried his fingers open and began vigorously wiping pine needles from it.

She didn’t look for praise; simply abandoned him there on the floor, a safe distance from the problem, and went back to whatever it was she was doing, succumbing, it seemed, to the fact that she’d be getting him out of situations like this for the foreseeable future.

If their nascent personalities stay on track, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Sister and brother, sure. But also rule maker and rule breaker. While their dad and I sit back and watch. And laugh, quietly.

Back when I was meeting with the life coach, he had me write up a list of goals that he told me to put up in my home office space, so I would always be reminded of the things I wanted to accomplish. He suggested I put professional goals as well as more fun, casual goals, to make the list less daunting. I liked this idea and so I did what he said.

So, just now, while working on a piece of writing I just can’t seem to get finished, I leaned back in my chair, glanced up and saw the list - black marker on a white index card - and was drawn to the first item:

Finish “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”

And then I got all dejected. Because what exactly has happened to my mind that I can’t complete the simple task of reading a famous, classic work of literature?

Fact is fact, though. And it doesn’t look like I’m going to be finishing the book anytime soon.

I know that the point of the list isn’t to make me feel bad. It’s to make me feel inspired. So I might have to take it down and replace the goals with more realistic ones like, “write your own book” or “bake something.”

But just to be fair to myself, I’d like to take a moment right now to remind everybody of that summer where I read “War and Peace.” For fun, guys. Just for fun.

Our mornings can go one of two ways. Before this fall, our mornings were almost always a source of calm during what were otherwise frantic days. Coffee. The news. Everybody content.

Once Nora started school, though - J takes her every morning - things changed. On good days mornings are serene, like they used to be. Good days. Days when, like, we lay out everybody’s clothes the night before, and I get up in time to take a shower, and Mina doesn’t decide to take advantage of the freedom we allow the dogs when we let them out the back door and into our unfenced back yard by trotting on out into the neighborhood streets to have some fun, without our knowledge.

Nora has to be at school at a fairly early hour and we simply have to be super organized if we want things to go smoothly.

So, you know, sometimes we aren’t super organized.

This morning, for instance. We were at a disadvantage going in. Gabe and I have colds and neither of us had slept well, so I woke up and put a robe on and stumbled downstairs envisioning getting right back into bed once everyone was off and on their way, which is a really funny thing to envision when you have a baby to take care of. Really funny.

And then when I went in Nora’s room to see if she was awake, she popped up in her bed and shouted, “I want a snack!” She has breakfast at school, but she often has a little something before. Her saying this is a terrible omen of things to come, because when she’s in the “I want a snack” mood, every thing you have to do from there on out is not only going to be the normal level of annoying…brushing teeth…brushing hair….walking down the stairs…it’s also going to be one more thing she has to do before she can have her bunch of grapes, or clementine or what have you.

So Nora’s angry off the bat and Gabe’s coughing up a storm and I look like I did that week I was doing my college essays and I refused to get out of my pajamas for five straight days and J is making coffee frantically because no matter how little time we have to do it, the coffee must be made. Otherwise we’re no better than barbarians.

I was holding the baby and went to put him down on his back on the floor, but he wanted to sit up, a skill he’s mastered very well, although his balance isn’t yet 100 percent. Just as I let go of him, Nora called my attention to something, most likely the whereabouts of her snack, and Gabe toppled over and hit his head on the wooden part of our ottoman. I always try to keep him away from this particular piece of furniture for this very reason, but this wasn’t one of our good mornings, and my parenting wasn’t quite up to par.

He immediately began crying so I picked him up to comfort him and noticed that he had a cut on his eyelid and was bleeding. I had put my wobbly baby in a sitting position near a hard piece of furniture and he’d cut his eye and had what looked like a blossoming bruise across his nose.

I felt terrible about what had happened, but he settled down after a few minutes and I could see that the cut wasn’t too deep.

Compare this incident to a similar one that occurred when Nora was about the same age. She rolled off the couch once when I had looked away for a second. No cut. No blood. Nothing like that. But I cried for about two hours, in the midst of which I called the doctor and deemed myself an unfit parent.

She was fine.

I knew this time around that Gabe was fine, too, despite the visual drama. But as we were planning on calling the doctor anyway about his relentless cold, we decided to add this latest injury to the mix and contact them sooner rather than later.

We got an appointment at 9:15 and J offered to meet me there after dropping Nora off since I wasn’t feeling great. And looking like a homeless person. I mean, he didn’t present that as a reason I might like a companion, but I know what’s up.

The doctor’s visit confirmed that the cut was no big deal, but that the cold was a bigger deal than we thought. He hadn’t been presenting any of the typical symptoms, but the doctor discovered that Gabriel has an ear infection - a double one, in fact, as both ears are affected. “What a trooper!” we proclaimed, as he rolled around on the examining table, enjoying the sound of of the crinkly paper underneath him and babbling happily.

This behavior continued as we waited downstairs for his prescription. Bruised, beaten, in need of antibiotics, and charming everyone with his wide smile and array of baby noises.

I thought about the time Nora had fallen and skinned her knee, and proceeded to talk about it for three or four weeks. And about how I’d been wandering around like the living dead for the past couple days. About how J’s day is basically ruined if he finds a hole in his sock.

I wondered if this carefree dismissal of pain and suffering in favor of good times would follow Gabe out of babyhood and, if so, where the hell that attitude came from.

I asked J if he thought maybe this child might differ from us in certain, crucial ways, and what strange and unfamiliar events could occur as a result.

“Is he going to be a quarterback?” I asked him. “Oh my God, is he going to be in a frat?”

“I went totally crazy on Etsy this morning!”

“That’s the gayest thing you’ve ever said.”

“Etsy’s not gay. I was looking up knives, and - ”

“GAYEST THING YOU’VE EVER SAID.”

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about karma and how “what goes around comes around.” And also about emotional detachment and being zen.

Because I was a philosophy minor? No. Because of potty training and nap times and tragically mundane stuff like that. But still. You can get lofty.

A few weeks ago I wrote a piece for The Huffington Post called “What Potty Training Taught Me,” in which I hinted at the hell potty training has been in this household. Honestly, guys, nothing about parenting - not the fussiness, the sleeplessness, the loneliness, the tantrums, the contrariness - has been this hard for me.

People have a lot of advice on the subject, as everyone does on everything parenting-related, and I now truly understand, more than I ever have before, that kids are simply different, and what works for your kid may not work for mine. People who say that kids have to train themselves had kids that effectively trained themselves. People who say that you have to be strict had kids who responded to strictness.

What we have is an adorable, blue-eyed little girl, who will mindlessly pee all over the couch, then look at my face, as I try to judge how I want to play this one (our latest tactic is saying little, letting the responsibility lie with her) and then ask, softly, “Are you happy?”

Not because she’s perfected sarcasm at age three, but because she is honestly interested in emotions lately. And so when I say something like, “I’m not that happy when you have an accident,” she’ll say, “I want you to be happy.” Now we’re not even talking about potty training anymore. Now we’re dealing in feelings.

This is just one example of many when it comes to how non-interested Nora is in potty training. And for a few weeks I thought constantly and relentlessly about how to get her to change her attitude. J and I have been nothing but positive about the whole thing - at least for the most part. Maybe we needed to be more aggressive? Maybe more enthusiastic? Maybe less cloying? Maybe more hands-off? We’d tried every tactic in the book and then some but perhaps we weren’t doing it right.

Then one day I was talking to Nora’s teacher, who suggested, when I asked her advice, that we let her wear pull-ups to school for the time being to alleviate the number of accidents she was having, that her teachers were having to clean up. Less stress for everyone.

I don’t know why that did it, but I decided that very day to just let it go. Nora could have accidents. I didn’t care. She would get it. She was the only person in control of the situation - I’d always known that - and she’d get it when it meant enough to her. That day, when I brought her home from school, I didn’t leave the baby crying on his activity mat to take her for the potty break I knew she needed. Instead I asked her if she had to go and she said no. And I said “ok.”

I have felt a million times better since. When I get worried about the time it’s taking her to learn, I think about the fact that I was three-and-a-half at least, according to my mother, before I was fully potty-trained. Payback. Or genes. Or whatever.

I’ve had to face similar changes with Gabriel’s sleeping habits.

So maybe Nora isn’t the world’s potty-training champion. Doesn’t matter because she was the champion at sleep. Oh, that child and sleep. Slept through the night at barely 12 weeks. Shifted through time zones effortlessly and slept late when she needed it. Crashed when she became overtired, instead of giving us a hard time. Still, she’s an amazing and deep sleeper.

Not our darling Gabriel!

While he’s certainly not terrible, he’s required more work. A bit of sleep training and scheduling. We got him to sleep through the night a couple months ago, a feat I announced at the time with incredible pride, only to lose our stride. The past few weeks have been less than stellar. Yes, he’s teething and has gotten his first cold, but it’s hard to revert back to a place of such all-encompassing fatigue.

Plus, as I was telling J this morning, the fact that his sleep habits - when good - were because of my work, and not because of his natural patterns, it’s hard not to feel - when things aren’t going well - that it’s not my fault. Sure, he’s got a cold, but up three or four times to eat? Certainly there must be something I could do. Leaf through my copy of “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child,” for the millionth time, or not let him nurse so much at night lest he develop a habit or maybe check into a hotel for a week, and sleep there.

Well. That last one is more of a daydream.

It’s this sort of annoying and unrelenting self-analysis and doubt that might be my least favorite part of parenting. That I can obsess over the timing of Gabe’s morning wakeup for hours, wondering what in the world I can do to make it better (as in, later…5:30, kid, really?)

This line of thinking carries me so quickly to other questions, other overly-dramatic conclusions…perhaps putting him in daycare two days a week is ruining his sleeping patterns, or even worse, his life…perhaps leaving him to cry will have a negative and lasting effect on him, or maybe NOT leaving him to cry will make him needy and weak…perhaps a supplemental bottle of formula would help him get through the night, but what about the undeniable, God-given, guilt-producing, glory of my breast milk, I mean, come ON, am I Satan over here?

When I get like this, J always says one thing. He says, all casual, “He’s just a baby.” And for a while I was like, “Just a baby?! What do you even mean? He’s just a baby whose nap was 24 minutes shorter than it should have been today!”

But recently, I’ve started to get it. He is just a baby. Babies cry and are unpredictable, and me getting all obsessed over these minor details does nothing good for him. For anyone. Perhaps most importantly, for myself. Because thinking about how many ounces I can pump in a day when there is Herman Cain coverage out there - when there is Kim Kardashian and Jessica Simpson’s pregnant! - is, well, a little depressing.

So, as I was rocking little Gabriel last night, during his third wakeup of the evening, I looked over at my snoring first child - the two are sharing a room - and I thought about how easy this particular aspect of babyhood had been with her. Payback, I thought. I’m due for a not great sleeper.

And I let it go.

This is how I’m getting zen. I hope that when Justin comes home tonight, we talk about a lot of things, like whatever wine we open after the children are in bed, or how “Breaking Bad” has instilled in me a totally unfounded fear of Mexican drug lords.

Maybe just a little bit about how the hours between when I pick Nora up from school and he comes home are difficult, because the baby is fussy and I’m all worn out on motherhood at that point - because it is important that we talk about our days - but not too much questioning or concern because that seriously gets in the way of having a good time.

I mean, so does pee on the couch. But not as much as it used to.

Awesome, awesome jeans, that cost a decent amount of money, I want you back (on my body).

Current running/workout mix. And, no, I’m not sick of “Gold Digger.”
(Memories, Karla.)

Holler we want PRE-NUP, yeaaaaahhh.

“Close To Me”/The Cure
“I Gotta Feeling”/Black Eyed Peas
“Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”/Vampire Weekend
“O.P.P.”/Naughty By Nature
“The Twist”/Frightened Rabbit
“Pounding”/Doves
“Oxford Comma”/Vampire Weekend
“Gold Digger”/Kanye West
“Material Girl”/Madonna
“Daylight”/Matt and Kim
“So Far We Are”/The French Kicks
“Hey Ya!”/Outkast
“New York, New York”/Ryan Adams
“M79″/Vampire Weekend
“Elevator Love Letter”/Stars
“Lisztomania”/Phoenix
“We Found Love”/Rihanna

Yesterday morning I was washing dishes when one of Nora’s plastic cups - the little ones I got at Target, decorated with monkeys hanging from trees - lodged itself in the drain. I was cleaning up after Halloween festivities at our house, and although the job was totally manageable, there were chips and dips and whatnot left on plates, and so when that cup (without my knowledge, as the sink was full and I couldn’t see a thing) slipped into the drain, it formed a perfect seal, thus leaving me with a basin of dirty water. With stuff floating in it. Gross.

I immediately thought, “How the hell am I going to get this thing out?” Because I could fit my fingers between the rim of the cup and the drain just slightly, but not enough to budge it, so I experienced this moment of, “Well, this is how our sink will be now. Filled with water and tortilla chips and unusable, but we will get by.”

I quickly corrected this line of thinking, however, by reminding myself to try harder.

I know this is going to sound annoyingly sentimental, but I’ve been telling myself to try harder a lot lately. Not in a depressing way, like when a lost cause type looks at his or herself in the mirror, all bedraggled and wearing sweats, and they’ve just lost their lover and then the music montage begins and they get totally awesome right before your eyes.

I mean, I don’t want to sing my own accolades or anything, but I feel pretty good about myself lately. I’m in decent shape, thanks to exercising when I am able, and eating well most of the time and my darling Gabriel, who I estimate is helping me burn five or six million calories a day with his aggressive nursing regime.

I get up in the morning and get dressed and I have a a lot of fun, snuggling up with the baby and writing and doing things around the house.

It’s so different than after I had Nora. So different. Both experiences were good, but brought totally different emotions, and I’ve been comparing them a lot. With my first child, I was almost immediately seeking social outlets: other new moms, emails and phone calls looking for and giving advice, classes, being out and about.

I had to get used to being home. I had to learn to schedule my time and accept my new life, which did not include the vision I’d always held for myself, of being a full-time working mother.

I did make it work, but it took a lot of energy and annoying self-analysis. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy, but becoming a mom for the first time was a big adjustment, especially since my life wasn’t the way I thought it would be. Now, I’m glad it all happened the way it did.

With Gabriel, on the other hand, I felt almost immediately at peace. Not those first five days or so, after he was born and J caught the flu and everyone we knew was out of town and I was peeing all over myself all the time due to post-birth incontinence. What? Yeah you guys. Admitting it. Thankfully that, and the generally chaotic nature of having two kids calmed down week by week.

But even in the crazier moments, being a mother to a second child was so much easier. So much less angst and worry and none of the wondrous fear that new parents simply have to go through that first time around.

With Nora, it took me forever to learn how restful it could be to simply let her sleep in the crook of her arm while I read a magazine. With Gabe - when I had a quiet moment in our new, crazy life - I did this every chance I got.

So once Nora started school this fall and I had some time - which has recently increased since the baby’s started a couple days of daycare a week - my energy didn’t have to go towards the insanity of taking care of two little kids, and it didn’t have to go towards my new redefined role in life. Because if you want to know the truth, I’ve never felt more defined. Or lucky. I’ve been working hard at specific goals, like getting Gabe on a good sleep schedule, and making sure J, Nora and I sit down to eat dinner together at least a few times a week.

I’d be doing great at getting tons of sleep, too, but we’ve started staying up late watching “Breaking Bad,” on Netflix in bed at night so that’s all shot to hell.

My energy is now available for other pursuits, too. Which, by the way, brings me back to that cup in the sink. Really.

I was halfheartedly trying to get it out of there when I thought about this conversation I’d had with my mother the other a few days before. She’d been at Rosemont College, where she went to school, at a committee meeting with Ronnie Ahern, who somehow stumbled upon this blog a few years ago and has been reading it ever since, which is absolutely the best.

Anyway, during the meeting, Ronnie came up to my mother and asked why I hadn’t been posting much. Nothing about the new baby. When Nora was born, she said, I wrote a ton. Now, barely at all.

She’s right, and I have a hundred excuses but I’m not going to list them all here. Excuses are dumb and the important point is that when my mom said that, my immediate reaction was, “Hey, I should write more.”

Maybe because it’s better to spend the free time I have writing than it is to keep checking the same web sites over and over when there aren’t too many jobs available.

Or maybe because one day the things I write casually will become the basis for a book of essays. Or because someone will see that I’ve written on a blog for many years and think that shows true dedication.

Or maybe just because Ronnie, and perhaps a few others, like it. And that the process of writing and someone actually liking it makes me feel really good.

So I was thinking about that, and how my sink was going to be clogged by a plastic monkey cup for the rest of our lives, and I had one of these moments where I said to myself, “Listen, I realize you didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, but you’re going to have to try harder right now.” Then I got a knife and wedged in between the cup and the drain and slowly pried that thing out of there. Then I also decided that I need to write on my blog more often.

Thank you, Ronnie, for the reminder, and thank you for reading, and I promise I’ll send Nora to Rosement. I mean, if she wants to go. Because when she doesn’t want to do something, she’s real good at throwing herself on the floor and having a little fit. And I know people say she’ll grow out of it, but that girl’s got dedication, so, you know, I’ll believe it when I see it.